Henry David Thoreau's Walking

[2] I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la sainte terre" — to the holy land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a sainte-terrer", a saunterer — a holy-lander.

[11] Moreover, you must walk like a camel which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking.

He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all, but the Saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea.

I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder, when I find myself so implicated even in what are called good works — for this may sometimes happen.

I looked again and saw him standing in the middle of a boggy Stygian (12) fen surrounded by devils, and he had found his bounds without a doubt, three little stones where a stake had been driven, and looking nearer I saw that the Prince of Darkness was his surveyor.

He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all, but the Saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea.

But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only, — when fences shall be multiplied, and man traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road; and walking over the surface of God’s earth, shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds.

B.C.) Roman author - back 14. variation of Manu; Hindu progenitor of and lawgiver to the human race - back 15.

The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the rider seems now to reside in — or perchance to have subsided into the Walker — not the Knight but Walker Errant.

[4] To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new, or rather an old, order — not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or Riders,(4) but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust.

The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the rider seems now to reside in — or perchance to have subsided into the Walker — not the Knight but Walker Errant.

But I prefer the first, which indeed is the most probable derivation.

The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness.

[3] It is true, we are but faint hearted crusaders, even the walkers, now-a-days, who undertake no persevering never ending enterprises.

[14] My vicinity affords many good walks, and though I have walked almost every day for so many years, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them.

chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o’clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the day-light — have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for, I confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance — to say nothing of the moral insensibility of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole

They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean.

Even some sects of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves since they did not go to the woods, "They planted groves and walks of Platans" where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticoes open to the air.

For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit (1) in us, to go forth and reconquer this holy land from the hands of the Infidels.

I wonder that about these times, or say between four and five o’clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning papers and too early for the evening ones, there is not a general explosion heard up and down the street, scattering a legion of antiquated and house-bred notions and whims to the four winds for an airing — and so the evil cure itself.

But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only, — when fences shall be multiplied, and man traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road; and walking over the surface of God’s earth, shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds.

I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make a emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization; the minister, and the school-committee, and every one of you will take care of that.

The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness.

From many a hill I can see civilization and the abodes of man afar.

No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence, which are the capital in this profession.

Even some sects of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves since they did not go to the woods, "They planted groves and walks of Platans" where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticoes open to the air.

Buonaparte (6) may talk of the three o’clock in the morning courage, but it is nothing to the courage which can sit down cheerfully at this hour in the afternoon over against one’s self whom you have known all the morning, to starve out a garrison to whom you are bound by such strong ties of sympathy.

When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been shaking the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments — making haste past those houses with purely Doric (7) or Gothic (8) fronts, which have such an air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about these times their occupants are all gone to bed!

Occasional medieval practice: if a warrior fell on foreign soil, and he was royalty and merited such treatment, his heart might be removed, preserved, and sent home for burial - back 3. "everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life" - Matthew 19:29 - back 4. orders of knights on horseback - back 5.

They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean.

Hence too apparently the Latin word vilis and our vile; also villain.